The Dolomite Solution (2 page)

Murdock did as he was told. He stood now with his hands crossed over his chest.

“Boxers,” Quinn quipped. “I had a feeling. You can't do her with those on.”

Murdock reluctantly lost his last bit of decency.

“So she does excite you,” Quinn said. “Go ahead.”

Murdock hesitated until Quinn sent a round flying just over his head, hitting a mirror behind him.

He went to the bed and got on top of her. She was struggling, trying to protest behind the tape, and arching her chest up and bottom down like she was trying to sink into the mattress.

Quinn picked up a camera from the nightstand and started flashing instant photos, stacking them on his lap.

After Murdock had been forced to enter her again and again, he was finally allowed to get dressed. Murdock went ahead to the car, and Quinn followed after a short while.

“Why'd you make me do that?” Murdock asked as they drove off.

“Insurance.”

The snow wasn't doing much at the moment, falling lightly to the cobblestone street. Quinn drove to the old town region and parked in a city lot along the river.

“Now where are we going?” Murdock asked. “I should go back and get my car at the resort.”

“You know you're a nosy bastard. You ask one more question and I'll pop your ass right there. Now get your ass out and follow me.”

Murdock did as he was told. He knew that something had changed in this man, yet he wasn't sure what it was. He had been intense in the past, but not like this.

They stepped quietly through the narrow cobbled streets of the old town, Quinn setting a slow and steady pace. In a few blocks they were at a dark, gloomy place, with dumpsters lining one brick wall. Snow was starting to cover the alley.

“What—”

“Shhhh...” Quinn pulled Murdock against the wall. “I told you not to say a word,” Quinn whispered, his left arm wrapped around the man's neck.

Murdock couldn't say a word now if he wanted to. He couldn't breathe. He struggled like the woman had squirmed under him just a short while ago, his arms flailing at his sides. He was bigger than this man. He should be able to escape, he told himself. But he couldn't do a thing.

“Remember what you just did to that woman,” Quinn whispered. “That's what I'm gonna do to your lovely wife, Ute.”

Murdock struggled with all his power.

“The difference is, she lets me tie her up.”

Quinn jerked back and twisted with unusual strength, like he had learned from the Marine in prison. There was a snap and Murdock's body went limp in Quinn's arms. Quinn dragged him behind a dumpster and lay him precisely as he wanted him, as if presenting him for burial. Then he shot the man and rolled him onto his own blood.

“There,” Quinn whispered softly. “Now don't go anywhere until I get back. I'm not done with you yet.”

He slipped back through the alley toward his car.

Techno music blared through the dark room, while dozens of bodies mashed together in chaos, their clothes glowing in the black lights, and the strobes pulsating against their bodies as if they were being fornicated by aliens.

Jake Adams leaned against a bar trimmed in pastel neon lights, sipping an overpriced beer and protecting the drink he had bought for the woman he had known for only a few hours. He had striking features. Strong jaw. Dark hair a bit longer than most in the bar. A physique, although masked somewhat by the bulky leather jacket, like that of a fencer or decathlete. Others had said he was more than good looking, yet he had never given his appearance much thought. After all, it was only skin over muscle over bone.

The woman he came in with smiled at him as she danced with a balding man who looked happy enough to be in love with his own disgustingly flabby body, and Jake couldn't take his eyes off the contrast that was her. She was wearing black spandex that clung to perfectly long legs, exercised, Jake guessed, by what she was doing now. Her low-cut, white cotton blouse bounced with each step, making him wonder how she kept her substantial breasts from falling out. As it was, there wasn't much she was hiding. She was more than skin, bone and muscle.

He took another sip of beer. This wasn't his kind of place. He had met the beautiful blonde a few blocks away at Innsbruck's most popular jazz club, and after a few drinks she had suggested this place. Probably to show off that wonderful body, Jake thought. Which was all right with him.

It was closing in on one in the morning and Jake, who was in good enough shape at thirty-five to dance until morning, was starting to feel the effects of all the beer. He still hadn't recovered fully from his flight a few days ago from Portland.

One song flowed into the next, sounding almost the same, and the blonde shoved aside the bald man and strutted up to Jake. She pushed another smaller woman away from him, picked up the drink, her back against the bar, and downed half of it. Then she took her hand and guided his palm to her firm buttocks. He wasn't in any position to complain about that.

She yelled into his ear, “Let's go.”

He couldn't complain about that either. They left the deafening beat and walked out onto a back street in the part of Innsbruck that tourists would never see. She had her hand on his butt as they swaggered down the cobblestones.

Jake's new apartment was only four blocks from the techno bar. He opened the door, flicked on the lights, and headed straight for the kitchen area, which was open to the living room and separated only by a counter.

“May I use your bathroom,” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. He rummaged through the refrigerator, found a few beers, and popped the tops.

As he turned, the woman was leaning against the doorframe completely naked. Jake had visualized her through her revealing clothes, and his thoughts had been pretty damn accurate.

“Why don't you bring those with you to the bedroom,” she said, turning and strolling toward the back room.

The phone rang in the dark room. Jake swiped his hand around seeking it out, finally bringing the handset to his ear. “Hello.”

There was no answer for a moment, and Jake wondered if he had actually heard it ring. It was the first time it had rung in the few days he'd been there. The blonde next to him rolled over, her bare breasts pushing against his back. Her perfume still lingered in the air.

“Hello,” he said again.

He was about to hang up when a voice came out saying, “Is this Jake Adams?”

“Yeah, who the hell is this?” He checked the red glow of the clock radio; it read three-fifteen.

“Never mind. I've got a job for you.”

The voice was deep and resonant with a strained English accent, as if he had learned the language from a horrible actor. “I'm not ready to take on anything yet.” Especially with those nice breasts rubbing against his back. She had a hand on him now, stroking him to life.

The man on the phone relented. “It has to do with a woman you know in the Agency.” There was silence for a moment. “I don't think I need to name names. You know who I mean. Meet me behind the Kublatz Restaurant in an hour.”

The man hung up and Jake set the phone down gently.

“I hope that wasn't anything important,” she said, sliding even closer to him. “You have time to put that big boy someplace?”

He checked the clock again and then rolled onto her.

Forty-five minutes later, Jake stepped lightly down the edge of the dark alley. Shards of dense snowfall bit at the back of his exposed neck like tiny needles.

He crept forward, thinking about pulling his gun from inside his jacket, and dismissing the thought as paranoia.

Suddenly, there were two flashes in the darkness. Jake dove behind a metal dumpster. He was right where the man on the phone had told him to go; the alley behind the Kublatz Restaurant. His mind clouded with obscure ignorance as he tried to understand the flashes that had surely come from a silenced handgun, and wondered why in the hell he had come there at four in the morning.

●

Quinn laughed to himself, gazing through the night vision goggles at the dumpster that Adams had just scurried behind like a frightened rat. His shots had gone way over the man's head, but then Jake had no way of knowing that. It was perfect. When he had first heard that the man who had ruined his life would be in the same city as him, he couldn't believe his good fortune. When he had actually seen the man, he knew that his luck was changing for the better. He had thought long and hard in prison, projecting a scenario for this very meeting. The city didn't matter. Circumstances like this couldn't be ignored. He had Adams just where he wanted him.

●

Jake peeked around the dumpster for a better view of what lay in the murky corner of the alley, but he could see only ten feet out, if that. He had his gun out now but wasn't sure why, since it would be crazy to shoot into the black abyss, unsure of his target. Maybe the two flashes were simply his eyes playing tricks on him. An aberration of some totally explainable phenomenon. Like a flashlight. No. He had been fired on in the dark with silenced guns before, and he knew what it looked like. Even in his current state of near-inebriation, he knew a muzzle blast when he saw it.

Another flash.

He ducked quickly and scrunched his brawny frame deep into the corner of the dumpster and wall. He scratched at his normal three-day growth of beard, wondering how to get out of this situation. Wondering even more how he had allowed himself to get into it.

Maybe he should just retreat the way he came, he thought. No. He'd have to travel nearly a block of open alleyway with no protection. And retreating, although appropriate at the right moment, was never a trait Jake liked to associate with himself. He thought about the voice on the phone earlier. It had sounded somewhat familiar.

A chill came over him, making him shiver and his teeth rattle. He had hastily thrown on blue jeans, black T-shirt, and leather jacket on the way out the door. When he had gotten outside, he realized the temperature had dropped significantly since he had dragged himself home from the bar, and the snow that was supposed to have been light across Austria, was dense and heavy, with four inches on the ground already. Jake found his basketball shoes woefully inadequate.

Taking in a deep whiff, Jake relished the freshness in the air at first and then the noxious odor of rotting pork from the dumpster tweaked his nostrils, nearly making him puke. He could have been back in his warm bed with whatever her name was, sniffing her sweet aroma.

He had to make a move. Think. Finally he settled on the direct method. “What in the hell are you shooting at?” Jake yelled.

No response.

Since nobody had heard shots, he guessed he was on his own. But why was somebody shooting at him in the first place? He had only been in Innsbruck for a few days. Had not even started working his first case. Hell, he was still on vacation.

Shifting his eyes over the dumpster, Jake knew he'd have to shoot back. There was no other way. Maybe someone would hear his shots and call the polizei.

He craned his neck around the dumpster again, and immediately there was a flash. He flipped his gun around and shot twice, the sound echoing back and forth from one brick building to the next. There was a moan off in the darkness. Had he hit the shooter? Impossible. He had aimed high into the brick walls.

Following his shots, a light came on in a second floor window, and a little dog started yapping. Then Jake could see the silhouette of a large man looking down on the alley.

“Why are you doing this?” Jake yelled to the shooter.

There was silence.

The man up above hollered down in German, “I have called the polizei.”

Jake thought for a moment. Then he shouted to the man in the window, “Someone was shooting at me.”

The man disappeared. Moments later, a narrow blinding light came on in the alley and a door creaked open across from him. The robust man looked out at Jake, wearing gray slacks and a white undershirt, and holding a metal pipe in his thick right paw.

“Go back inside,” Jake said. He was on his feet now, trying to maintain his footing in the rising snowfall. He had his gun at his side but ready.

The man saw the gun and shut the door slightly.

With the new light in the alley, Jake looked off to where the shots had been fired, and where he had haphazardly aimed. He could just make out a figure on the pavement, lying away from another dumpster. He crept forward toward the body, his gun out in front. The light was behind him, over his shoulder. Snow falling across his face fluttered at his eye lashes, blurring his view further. When he was within a few feet, he reached one foot out and tapped the lump of a body. It didn't move. The body lay face down in the snow with a pile of the white stuff collecting on his back.

Jake rolled the body over. It was a man in his mid-thirties with dark hair, thick brows, and a thinly trimmed moustache. Something was familiar about him. Jake was certain he knew him, but wasn't sure how.

Oozing out into the deep snow beneath the man's chest was a large patch of blood that appeared almost black in the strange lighting. Perhaps even frozen.

Slowly Jake reached down to check the man's pulse. As he grasped the man's wrist, he was clubbed across the back of the head, and collapsed onto the dead man. The last thing he remembered was a feeling of drifting through snowy darkness.

●

Quinn looked at the two men on the ground. He raised his gun, leveling the sight on the back of Jake's head.

“No, this is too easy,” he said softly. “I'm not done with you yet, Jake Adams. If I had to suffer, then so shall you.”

He gazed around the snowy scene, ensuring everything was just as he had planned. When he was satisfied, he slid his gun inside his jacket and backtracked through the maze of alleyways.

Passo di Villa was at the end of a road that went nowhere. The village sat at the base of the Dolomite Range of the Alps in northern Italy, with a sheer limestone massif encircling the town in a half moon. Water flowed from the high rocks on two sides, cascading over a hundred meters in majestic falls. The two water sources came together a kilometer north of town, up at the end of the Valley Misterioso, to form the Sano River.